# Butler Feared the Speed of Machine Change by Samuel Butler > "I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* ## Sources and Context - **Full source:** [Samuel Butler, Erewhon, “The Book of the Machines”](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1906/pg1906-images.html). The fictional professor’s fear concerns trajectory, not the capabilities of machines already existing in 1872. The speaker is a fictional character in Butler's novel; the author stages more than one position. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Technological Evolution|Technological Evolution]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]] - [[wiki/Technological Evolution|Technological Evolution]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward." — Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor, 1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-butler-speed-of-machine-change ```